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THE EDWIN C. DINWIDDIE 

COLLECTION OF BOOKS ON 

TEMPERANCE AND ALLIED SUBJECTS 

( PRESENTED BY MRS. DINWIDDIE) 



E. C. DINWIDDIE), 



THE SOWER 



BY 



JOHN G: WOOLLEY 




THE CHURCH PRESS 
/ CHICAGO, U. S. A 



COPYRIGHT, 1898 

BY THE CHUKCH PRESS 

CHICAGO 



Gift 

MRS. Edwin C. Dinwiddfc 

Aug. 6. 1935 






€i t%% 




: -.;-v>^r- .:''■■'■'■'''■':''' ■'■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 



THE SOWER, 



CHAPTEK I 

EXTENUAIING CIRCUMSTANCES. 

"If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are 
spiritual restore such an one in a spirit of meekness, 
lest ye also be tempted." 

j UDGE USAGE holds that every ratio ei- 
^ Dation taken, ' : in print,'" flagrante de 
lictu. shall be permitted — as a matter of 
common mere}' — to answer the question; 
"Have you anything to say, why sentence 
of death should not now be pronounced 
upon you?" 

* 

As a rule, what the prisoner saj^s, makes 
no difference. Nevertheless, it might; 
and therefore comes now the defendant 
with stiffish confidence in the upshot, and 
avers that, as a little sermon, in which 
character it has often appeared in , b- 



lie on the stage, it needed no apology, 
and that, there are others ready to 
verify. 

# 

Nor needs one now, perhaps, but at a ven- 
ture plugs a picked argument or two, 
like oakum, into the judicial pause, not so 
much to affect impending judgment, as, 
like a true fanatic, to prevent even the 
slightest leak of opportunity, and inci- 
dentally, to put itself at ease in these new 
clothes; lose if it can, the self-conscious- 
ness of types and binding and regain the 
composure of its aforetime decent patches 
and homespun, as many a humble gospeler 
before, has felt constrained to do, when 
publishing a tall, refulgent hat which 
some benevolent but inartistic friend has 
given him, to "cross match" with an apoc- 
alyptic coat, and trousers according to 
the "higher criticism." 
• 

So, gentle criticiser, please to under- 
stand that this is a tract, and noth- 
ing but a tract, innocent of literary design 
or even aspiration, having dropped into 
printer's ink, as Mr. Wegg, of fragrant 
memory, into poetry — as it were, "unbe- 



knownst" — from a lead pencil which trav- 
els fifty thousand miles a year with a 
busy, irregular unsatisfactory man who 
has neither time nor talent for writing 
books, nor any ambition but to bring 
about a head-on-collision between the 
church and the saloon — and be in it. 
* 

Whatever &f ill-will or ill-desert this 
book may be allowed, it cannot be 
denied that the writer of it parts with 
positive value when it leaves his hand. And 
thereby hangs a touch of history personal 
to him but germane to this apology, to- 
wit: 

• 

Ten years ago, with a vision of the 
situation that was most accurate — 
not to say prophetic, as the event has 
shown, having "blown in," his lusty 
youth, as the coarse but expressive slang 
has it, he "staked" his battered but clean 
prime, to lose in The Great Reform. And he 
has played, and lost regularly, not always 
patiently, not always wisely, but "on the 
dead square" with all his heart and 
mind and strength — without a whine. 
And today — January thirty-first, A. D., 

3H 



1898 — is the darkest, blue-black Monday of 
the five hundred and twenty one, if he 
counts surface indications or considers his 
own ease or his own fame. 

The saloon is in the saddle, and the vot- 
ing' church stands courtseying like an ex- 
pectant flunkey at its stirrup. 
* 

When Paul was stricken down on the 
Damascus road and called to take a 
great apostleship, God sent him to no sem- 
inary, but to a lowly man to learn the way 
of life and truth and victory. So, it seems, 
he does to lesser men, for lesser parts, this 
writer with the rest. 
* 

Straight through these cruel years his 
stay and counselor and guide has been 
not "Moses and the prophets," nor even 
the anointed one in whose g-reat name and 
for whose gentle sake all modern good 
consists; but the obscurest man that ever 
had a line of "honorable mention" in the 
world. 

* 

Him, Saint nobody, the Messiah of the 
clods, this pamphlet celebrates. 
Many a time, in deadly weariness of soul 



and body, the writer has dragged himself 
before an audience of Christian men whose 
faces were as arctic as the polar sea, to 
try to thaw them with his rush-light. 
And then, instead of arguing anything or 
any pleading, has read to them between 
the sacred lines, the story of a lowly hero, 
and the while watched their faces soften 
into tolerance or even smiles while his 
own heart postponed breaking', sine die. 
Such-wise now, of course, the story's use- 
fulness ends at the printing office. That 
is the author's sacrifice — and no little. 



And on the other hand, so many letters 
in cramped, toil-stiffened hand, have 
come to thank him for the story; so 
j flagging hearts have quickened by 
it. he is told; that he is willing- to forego 
the oral narrative hereafter and send the 
printed version broadcast to the whole 
fellowship of those who strive, and seem 
to fail. 

* 

Howbeit, let there be confessed a 
modicum of pathetic and forgivable 
—and a desire to celebrate himself — 
for that, at the end of a decade of amazed 



iand progressively .hopeless discourage- 
ment he is yet willing, like an old dog, 
torn and winded in a chase that failed, to 
poke an inglorious muzzle into the dangl- 
ing palm of the Church and make another 
ten years run for her, though all her 
keepers would drive him from the hunt 
with sneers and blows. 



CHAPTEE H. 

KEY OF E. 

"He that goeth forth and weep-rth, bearing pre- 
cious seed, shall doubtless come again, briDginig 
his sheaves with him."' 

A BOOK dedicates itself to the hearts it 
touches or the hands it moves, re- 
gardless of authorial predestination, just_ 
as a note of music flies straight to the 
tone — fellow of its own wave-length — nilly 
willy the player; and as a tired honey bee 
hums in the Key of "E" — but hums — so, 
this voice from a field, worn, thin and 
small, and tired-just the same as if it were 
fresh and strong and beautiful — sends a 
passing cheer to every "E" life on the 
straight and narrow way: 
• 

Editors, who, watching their news- 
papers in anxious nights, have seen 
"His star in the east and followed it" — 
only to have their mail diminish and their 
friends grow cold; while the sleek sew- 
age peddlers and whisky advertisers they 



compete with for a hearing, grow rich and 
popular and influential; 
* 

T~ eaehers, who, sitting- at His feet, 
have gotten a preparation that ap- 
parently unfits them to hold their own 
with the crude boordorn that has "a pull;" 
# 

Students, who, for His sake, have pur- 
posed in their hearts that they will 
not defile themselves with the club's wine, 
only to see themselves outstripped in 
social ways by the unclean scoffers at 
virtue or abstinence in man or woman- 
kind; 

* 

Doctors, who, having' laid their gifts 
upon His altar, have gone forth to 
walk in the dust of honesty and dignity 
and modesty, only to see the Quack drive 
by them on the race course of the world; 
* 

Pastors, who, surrendering to the 
truth have lost their turn in the line 
of promotion and seen the great church 
doors swing shut against them, their 
children's chances in the world diminished 
for want of opportunities that come in 



crowds to toadies and agreeable gluttons, 
and their sweet-faced wives bleaching out 
in the cellar air of failure, year bj r year; 

Mothers of children, poisoned from 
their father's loins, who have done 
their best — and miserably failed — to fight 
off the black heredity and win what is 
their own by every syllable of justice in 
the world; 

* 

Citizens who have knelt to Him and 
sworn "to be His man from that day 
forth with life and limb and earthly hon- 
or," only to find themselves compelled to 
train in rag'ged minorities with uncon- 
genial and unlovely company — to go un- 
counted in the civic battles, and cut no 
figure but for ridicule. To these and such 
as these, this fragment of biography is 
given with a brother's greeting, and some- 
thing like a prayer. 



CHAPTEK III. 

GUI BONO? 
"A sower went forth to sow." 

THAT is not the text, but the whole story 
— a five-act tragedy with a clown in 
the leading role— solus. 

T is a hopeless history if ever there was 
one; an indefinite article with the com- 
monest of nouns, subject of an intransitive 
predicate, vanishing at length in a rural 
infinitive. 

Personnel never appeared to less ad- 
vantage; travel never offered smaller 
comfort; incident never sunk to deeper 
poverty. 

But there is method in this meanness, 
and if you care to learn the secret of this 
dreary man, you must at the outset see 
him where he is; — 



CHAPTER IV. 

LOCUS IN QUO. 

"Whereunto ye do well that ye take heed as unto 
a light that 9hineth in a dark place." 

A DULL, flat, uninteresting landscape 
without dimensions, distance, fore- 
ground, color, mountains, sky — without 
anything to speak of. One man's patch — 
an expressionless pancake of a field, lumpy 
with outcropping boulders between wild 
briars rooting at their branch-ends and 
crawling out like giant vegetable spiders 
into the open — a winding roadway fringed 
with wire-grass lurking among stagnant 
pools of yellow water, beating about the 
bush, rutted and spiritless, leading no- 
where, anywhere, everywhere. 



Signal service" weather! Variable 
winds — east, shifting to north, south 
and west — showery with drought, in the 
morning — oppressive heat in the evening 
with frost — milder — cold, warm — fair! 



gn the midst, a man, with wooden shoes — 
i or none — and shabby clothes — with a 
bag slung to his neck, striding back and 
forth through thorns and sand and shrubs 
and rocks, step by step, handful by hand- 
ful, sowing — the moon wrong side up, all 
the planets of bad luck in conjunction, 
rows of neighbors on the stump fence 
laughing at him, gulls, in clouds, following 
him with mis-fit wings and idiotic little 
squeak, eating the grain at his heels — . 
a full "crop" for every bird; for him, 
"the patience of hope" and "the bag to 
hold"— walking. Give him — and welcome — 
of the fruit of his own hands and let his 
works praise him in the gate-^-of the luna- 
tic asylum! 

This man is not worth while save that 
his very brute faith and stalwart density 
to difficulties, raise a suspicion that he 
may be somewhat other than he seems. 
* 

One peril is spared him — vanity. He 
need not labor to keep from being 
vain. His occupation is conducive other- 
wise. In that respect he is a live reform- 
er. Of such, only the dead — if they — hear 
flattery. If he had bethought him to en- 



large his operations by organizing that 
endeavor into a stock company, the shares 
would have been hard to float at any 
price. 

A speculator would have received him 
with derision or contempt, an investor 
would have been politer maybe, but as far 
from buying. And even farmers whose 
very life depended on the seed they sowed 
from year to year, would have found end- 
less objection: 

One might have said: "I, myself, am a 
husbandman, and of course, believe in sow- 
ing seed. I sympathize "with all wise and 
well-regulated" efforts for the increase of 
the acreage and the encourag-ement of 
early planting, but this land is not fit to 
farm, and you are forcing the season! The 
conditions are not right; there was frost 
last night, and if it clears off there will 
be more tonight! It is the wrong time of 
the moon. The neighbors are scandalized! 
It is of no use to sow in advance of public 
sentiment! You aire wasting your seed! 
You are throwing your strength away! 
See how long you have been sowing and 
not a spear has shown above the ground! 

"Stop! dig up some kernels and see if 

13 



they have germinated, and if any have, I 
will consider the venture more favorably! 
Or"if you will wait until you can actually 
show a standing crop, you may send for 
me! In fact, you will not need to send for 
me: I shall be here, then. I am as good 
a sower as you are, but I cannot afford 
to lose my seed!" 

If any had joined him in the enterprise 
it would have been people like himself 
having great faith in God that He will 
give the increase, faith in the seed that it 
will grow, faith in themselves that they 
have heard aright, all, with humility — 
strength to wait, or even fail. 

Humility is the drag of the bag of seed 
on the neck of the sower, earthward— 
hu ..us-ward. Vanity is the upward tilt of 
the chin when the sower's bag is empty — 
v&no-ty — the "smoothest" diplomat of the 
kingdom of darkness. 



14 



CHAPTEE V. 

"Before honor is humility." 

CHRISTIAN work is anti-vanity. The 
meekest soldier of the kingdom will 
occasionally ship a spiritual plume or two 
and be a Yankee Doodle disciple, for a lit- 
tle, as his heart dreams over some splen- 
did bit of jetsam he has dragged out of the 
teeth of the sea — some drunkard perhaps 
whom he has snatched from the saloon, 
and gotten pointed back to his father's 
house, or some fallen girl brought back 
to hope and truth by his own effort. 

But about the time that he begins to 
exult over the conscious amplitude of his 
faith and skill and power and to think of 
himself as a light house and a bell buoy 
and a life boat and a crew and a captain 
and a compass and a nautical almanac, all 
combined, pop goes his importance like a 
Prince Rupert's drop — his girl has slipped 
back into the whirlpool, his drunkard has 
gone jeering and cursing back to the 
drink and the gutter, leaving him nothing 

15 



for his pains but some rags and lies, and 
oaths — the vermin of language; and a 
dull pain at his heart quotes scripture to 
him, saying: "A sower went forth to sow.'''' 
And he takes up again the inelastic plod- 
ding of a simple sower, content, if as he 
trudges on he may see along his way the 
waving fruits of other peoples's sowing 
when his own poor field can boast not one 
green spear of bursting promise, and 
happy even if he can keep his heart quiet 
enough to sing in it an inaudible second 
to the song of distant reapers bringing in 
their sheaves at harvest home. 



16 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE MAN. 

"Let erery man abide in the place wherein he is 
found." 

IF the place was unpromising the man 
was no better — wherein is food for re- 
flection. There is a plague of "soft snap" 
hunters in the church. The reformer 
hears nothing more frequently than 
friendly criticism, this wise: You are all 
right in the abstract, but conditions are 
against you! You are premature! When 
my vote will kill the saloon it shall be cast 
to kill it! Which is, by interpretation: 
when that which is good is easy, cleave to 
it; when it is hard, wait for something 
to turn up! 

# 

And there is a plague, also, of tuft hunt- 
ers, as who should say: Your cause is 
right, but your workers are such lowly 
folk! Yon have no distinguished men and 
women! When the great turn to you, so 
will we! 



i7 



But the need of the world is not so much 
great men, as true men; whose word is 
good, men whose sons dare follow them, 
men whose paths are straight. 



It does not take a very great man to be 
true to wife and children and home! 
It does not take a great bishop to abide 
by a declaration which he has signed with 
his own hand! Truth in the inward parts 
is the desire of the church and the lack of 
it her deadly weakness. 



This man was lowly, but he was true. 
He was only a sower, but he faced 
that fact and did his level best. That takes 
truth. 

There was a touch of heroism, or stup- 
idity — they look very like sometimes — 
in the boy who, when asked about the 
breed of his puppy, had the courage or the 
simplicity to say, "just dog!" 

This man was not much, but what he 
was, he was. That is "the secret of the 
Lord," or close to it. 

The weakness and unfaithfulness of 
most people come of trying to be some- 
body else or somewhat else. 

18 



The temptation is most natural and al- 
most excusable, the faculty of imitation is 
so large in all of us, and this man probably 
did not escape it. Doubtless he would 
have liked to be "somebody" — a drum 
major with a bear skin hat and a brass 
baton — a troubadour with a guitar and a 
cloak — a crusader on a bow-necked horse 
cavorting toward the holy sepulchre — a 
preacher, an editor, a "favorite son" an 
"advance agent of prosperity," a "boy ora- 
tory' or chairman of something. 



But he weighed himself to a fraction — 
agreed to the limitations of his gifts, ac- 
cepted the humility of his calling, took his 
place as a private in the rear rank, but 
caught the step and kept it. 



A little girl, away from home on a 
visit, learned a new game: it was 
called heaven. On her return she intro- 
duced it to her playmates, and, assigning 
the characters, said to one of them: 
"Mary, you can be an angel," and was 
proceeding with the cast, when Mary, 
pouting, interrupted the proceedings to 

19 



declare that, unless she could be God, she 
would not play heaven. 

The church is full of that. So many 
fairly willing- workers strain them- 
selves to the point of uselessness, stretch- 
ing- up to things that are too high for 
them: If I were our pastor, I should 
preach better sermons! If I were an 
orator I should thunder for the great re- 
forms! If I were rich, I should pour 
wealth into the work of rescue! If I had 
social prestige, my home should give out 
health continually! If I were the super- 
intendent, we should have better order! 
If I were on the committee the program 
would have been more interesting! "If 
I"— "If I"— It is really two "I's" with a 
doubt between them and the result is 
precious near nothing at all. For none of 
us is some other, and the vital condition 
of service in any place at any time, is to 
be our own most potent selves. 

* 

sphere is something positively pathetic 

■ in that indefinite article "a." That 

fetches the subject down to "bed rock." 

If it were only "the," we might lift him up 



a trifle at any rate in imagination, as one 
does the tradesman whose signs npon the 
fences by the roadside describe him as 
"the druggist" et cetera, and. think of 
him as "head sower" in that locality or 
something, certainly, above the common 
herd. But he is denied — and that, by in- 
spiration — the incalculably small distinc- 
tion of the definite article. Lower, it is 
impossible to go, on a farm. "A sower" 

* 

What was his name? Let us not make 
fun of him; he had no name. What 
wages did he get? None by this record. 
Whose farm was it? Nobody's. Certainly 
not his, or he would have been named in 
the story. Where did he live? Nowhere! 
What tribe was his — what sect — what 
party? None. W T hat was his creed? 
Nothing to speak of. Who loved him? 
Who appreciated? Who cheered? No- 
body. He was Nobody of Nowhere, and 
by even such plodding, unromantic men 
as he this world is to be won in toil, dis- 
couragement, frost and heartache. 



C o, it was a hard place; The man was 
<-> commonplace to the last degree, but 
he was true. There was method in his 
mediocrity and his conduct was unique 
from start to finish. 



CHAPTER VII. 

WAYS AND MEANS. 

IN the first place he "went" and that is 
more important than at first glance it 
seems. 

You cannot tell much about a horse, or 
a man, until you see him go. 

If you were intending to buy a horse 
you might be shown one shut in a box 
stall, knee deep in clean straw, with a 
light blanket curcingled over him — with 
eyelets to see through; his mane and tail 
done up in curl papers, his legs bandaged 
with flannel bandages, his hoofs blackened 
with oil and tar and packed with sawdust 
or oil meal. That is a good place and a 
good way to keep a horse, but a bad way 
to buy one. 

If a general survey under such conditions 
had impressed you favorably to buying, 
you would say to the seller assuming you 
to have what is called horse sense: "Lead 
him out! Let me see how the sun-light 

23 



strikes his eyes when he first comes out 
of the dark stall! Leit me examine his 
teeth and his coat where I can see! Take 
the blanket off! Take the hairpins from 
his mane and tail, and let me see the hang 
of them! Remove the bandages and let me 
run him over for puffs, and windgalls, and 
splints and spavins and ring bones and curbs 
and stifles and scratches? Throw the har- 
ness on him! Bridle him! Hitch him up! 
Let me see him "back!" Let me see if he 
will stand quiet while I get in the wagon! 
Give me the reins. Let me feel his 
mouth! Let me see if he takes the bit 
evenly or hogs it on one side and takes 
the road crossways! Let me drive him 
for an hour at a good clip and see how 
he breathes! Let me hitch him to half a 
ton of rock and see if I should probably 
get back if I were away from home with 
him and the road should get heavy, or I 
should strike a bit of corduroy or sand! 
Let me drive him up to the electric car! 
Let me raise an umbrella behind him and 
see if he understands! 

"Let me hitch him to a post and see if he 
will stand hitched ! Let me drive him through 
the water and wash the paint from his 

24 



hoofs and then look for quarter cracks! 
Let me trot him over the cobble stones and 
beat the packing out of his feet and see 
what kind of frog- pressure he shows then, 
or what signs of pricks or corns!" 



I cannot trust to the stable or the groom 
or the seller, or the points or the looks. 
The horse market is full of "fine lookers" 
that cannot go. They have fine style, 
"gentle as kittens." "Any lady can drive 
them." They stretch their necks and 
snort, and beg to be speeded. They look 
as if they could make la mile in two min- 
utes or less. They paw, and toss their 
manes — and at the end of the first mile 
their knees go over, their feet give out, or 
their wind thickens. 
# 

Men are like that. The church is full 
of "fine lookers" who cannot go. 
Fine coat, fine hair, small feet, small ears, 
good nose, good teeth, good color, good 
style, good feeders, good disposition. Who 
stamp the carpet in pulpit and in pew, un- 
til the dust flies. Who stretch their hands 
toward the saloon and beg: "Let me at 

25 



it!" Who cry aloud and spare not — words. 
Who pass rousing resolutions, and refuse 
to be quiet. But who, when they take the 
road upon election day, groan and wheeze 
and swell and cramp and heave and limp 
and lie down at the door of the saloon. 
* 

How many a minister exhibits all the 
points — theological and other, except 
"r oading ! " His neck is clothed with thunder 
and he scents the battle afar off — -so far 
off, that he cannot reach it until the day 
after. 

f you ever want to buy a Christian, do 
not buy him on Sunday! Let judgment 
begin at the house of God, but let it also 
continue out of doors. If one had come 
from another world to this, on a tour of 
inspection, arriving at, say, Brooklyn, the 
city of churches, on the Sabbath before 
election in the last presidential year, and 
had attended divine service and noted the 
solid men who composed a decimal frac- 
tion of the audiences and how they went 
through the manual of public worship 
with invocation, hymn, psalm, scripture 
lesson, liturgy, et cetera, and had spent 

26 



the intervals between meetings going 
about the streets and hotel corridors 
where men indeed were in the majority, — 
such men! by comparison with those who 
call themselves Christians, and had been 
told that of the whole country's voting 
Strength about fifty three per cent were 
estimated to be Christians, and had seen 
the saloon at its work of disease, debauch, 
dishonor, death, and been fully informed 
as to the constant nature and statistics of 
it and of not only the implied hostility of 
the church but also its express and world- 
filling declaration of war against it, and 
that the question of the continuation of 
the saloon as an institution and a source 
of revenue was among other things to be 
submitted to the people on the following 
Tuesday; he might have supposed that he 
could safely stake his existence on the 
outcome. And had he in indignant honor, 
as a citizen of the universe, been moved 
to speak to the saloon, he would have 
said: "Gorge yourself, monster! Eoot, 
hog, your accursed snout into the bosom 
of innocence and tear it! Eip up with 
your tusks the womb of motherhood! 
Crunch childhood's bones and set your 

27 



split hoof on a nation's brain! Drop your 
damnable litter at the church door for 
one more day! But Tuesday, you shall 
die the death as sure as men are brave 
and strong and true; for Jesus' friends 
have said it! Boast not of your gold and 
silver. If all the precious metals of all 
the hills of great America were wrung 
out, as one may wring the water from a 
rag, and offered to these men of God, one 
hours' ransom for your unspeakable blood 
guiltiness, they would answer only with 
a blow." 

But, alas! Those of us who knew this 
country, under stood full well through all 
that Tuesday when the sons of God were 
gathered together at the polls, that the 
saloon would be there also, and be there in 
command of church and state, cowing 
Christians with threats of panic, buying 
Christians with gold and silver and prec- 
ious stones, wood, hay, stubble, skins, 
ribbons, tin, tacks, twine — as daring 
traders put in fear, tempt, purchase sav- 
age men, with guns and glass beads and 
paint and looking glasses. 

And it was so. Blind justice sick to 

28 



death, put forth her hand to bless the elec- 
tion day, and said: "The hand is the hand 
of the Church, but the voice is the voice 
of the Saloon." 

• 

Do not employ a minister on Sunday! 
Many a minister speaks like a hero 
over the big official Bible who whispers 
like a fugitive from justice at the polls. 
Many a one thinks like a God in the sacred 
desk, who maunders like an idiot in the 
election. 



If you are looking for a minister, and 
know of one who can be had, and go to 
hear him and he seems to suit — seems to 
possess the qualities which please you — 
style, action, speed, wind; if you continue 
in the "horse-sense" aforesaid, you will 
say to those who are willing reluctantly 
to part with him: "Lead him out! Let me 
see him without his robes! Let me see 
his eyes when he comes out of the dim 
funereal light of the stained glass win- 
dows! Unbandage the limbs of his man- 
hood, and let me see him walk! Loosen 
the "overdraw" of dogma and let me see 
him drink from the open stream at his 

29 



feet! Let me raise a Sunday truth be- 
hind him on Tuesday and see if he recog- 
nizes it ! 

"Let me throw a party newspaper in 
front of him and see if he "turns out!" 
He seems to be shod with the preparation 
of the gospel all right as one looks at his 
patent leather shoes, but let him go over 
the cobble stones of a hard campaign 
hitched to an unpopular reform and beat 
the packing out of his hoofs and then 
see what kind of frog pressure he exhibits 
or signs of corns, or quarter cracks, or 
lender heels! Let me hitch him to a 
church resolution and see if he will stand 
hitched! Let me drive him up to the 
prohibition party and see if he shies!" 

The hero of this biography was no 
more a sower than a goer. 



30 



CHAPTER VIII. 

VEKBUM SAT. 

HE "went." The verb is in the active 
voice, and the indicative mode, in- 
transitive, third person, singular, and is 
such a crisp and satisfying- monosyllable! 
The bones of it — the consonants — nasal at 
first and then so dental that you can fairly 
see teeth in it, suggest the appropriate 
adverbs, and it grips the sense like an 
automatic air brake. He went voluntarily. 
He was no conscript; no driver curled his 
lash over him and drove him into the field. 
Xo martinet cursed him and forced him to 
play the man. One of the pitiful phenom- 
ena of Christian discipleship today, is that 
in their civic life, men wait to be led or 
driven to their duty. The great bulk of 
Christian men in our country would hail 
with enthusiasm any event which would 
force them into open war against the sa- 
loon. They have Christianity and patriot- 
ism, but both of such poor temper as to 
wait to be drafted. Yet they are trustwor- 

3i 



thy, almost to a man — once they shall have 
been mustered in and mobilized. The his- 
tory of prohibition may be written in 
three words some day by some laconic 
writer: "The Church ivenV 



32 



CHAPTEK IX. 

SYNTAX. 
'■For every man shalt bear bis own burden." 

AVEEB must agree with its subject in 
number and person. 
He went alone — one man and not much 
of a man at that. Where were the neigh- 
bors? Never mind; that is another his- 
tory. 

* 

t seems to be the hardest lesson of 
Christianity that the chrism is a separ- 
ater. 

The first condition of service is to 
stand alone, locomotion before that, 
is empty staggering. No pastor can lead 
his flock to higher fields until he, in his 
sole selfhood, unattended, has walked the 
way and camped upon the spot and plant- 
ed his colors on its highest ground. 



N 



o statesman can achieve a law or push 
a great reform to power, until in his 



own heart and mind he has cut his way 
through opposition and from the lookout 
of his personal victory beckons the peo- 
ple to come on. 

* 

The best that can be said of the gre- 
garious reformer, is that he follows, 
weakly and far to the rear, some lonely 
grenadier of truth, who has refused to be 
included in a job-lot, official surrender, 
and struck out alone to conquer or to die, 
afraid of nothing — ashamed of nothing — 
as much a man as if there were no other 
in the world. 



No man is fit to teach society, until he is 
willing to be a hermit for the sake of 
truth. 

* 

There can never be Christian social- 
ism, save by consecrated individual- 
ism blent in the righteousness of social 
forms. 

* 

No life can be trusted to be true in com- 
pany, until it is strong enough to be 
true alone. 



34 



H 



CHAPTEE X. 

WHO? 
Every man's work shall be made manifest." 
e — himself — Theory and practice con- 



solidated! Capital and labor recon- 
ciled! He sent no hired man. He was no 
landlord. What a funny Grand Army of 
the Republic it would be if the men who 
sent substitutes to the war, were to organ- 
ize. 

* 

Let it be conceded that his was not the 
pleasantest way to farm ; via sweat, 
blisters, chafes, and patches, is not hilar- 
ious in prospect nor picturesque historic- 
ally. But it is written so. 



Obiter. 

ONCE there was a man who lived in a 
city and practiced law. He had many 
clients and income not a little. He had a 
farm upon the shore of a beautiful lake, 
but did not live upon it. His servants 

35 



lived there. It was stocked with trotting 
horses, coach horses and thoroughbreds, 
Jersey cattle at seven hundred dollars a 
head, Shropshire sheep at fifty dollars a 
lamb, Poland China pigs at forty dollars a 
shoat, Bronze turkeys at twenty-five dol- 
lars a bird, Pekin ducks at ten dollars a 
pair. He bought eggs at a dollar apiece 
to "set" under common fowls. 

Every Saturday when the weather was 
fine, he would drive to the farm to stay 
until Monday, and on Sunday he would 
"farm." He would take his whole family 
to the pig pen and lean across the low 
fence to rub the little pigs with a wisp of 
straw until they should lie down — so cun- 
ning! And he would "farm" the stable by 
giving lumps of sugar to the horses — and 
hunt the eggs and tame the lambs — and 
launch the ducks upon the lake to see 
them swim; and he thought he had never 
known so delightful a business as "farm- 
ing."He boasted that his family depended 
on no grocer for their butter, which, in- 
deed, was true — and "dear," for what he 
had, cost probably not less than fifty dol- 
lars a pound the year round. 

But the butter was superfine and every- 

C36 



thing about the business was super some- 
thing, and in the end, the whole thing 
went — land and stock and poultry — as 
part payment for the investment. Cred- 
itors took everything but the man's ex- 
perience and he was like the boy that 
twisted the little mule's tail — not so proud, 
but brighter, ever after. 
* 

The "nice" way to farm, is to have a 
man to sweat for you, while you 
swing in a hammock in duck trowsers and 
a blazer with a book and a fan, drinking 
buttermilk through straws and seeing 
labor through verdurous boughs. 
* 

But that is not the profitable way. The 
ambition to be a gentleman-farmer 
is expensive and in contradiction of the 
rule obtaining in more aristocratic me- 
chanics involves loss of power and of speed 
as well. 



37 



CHAPTEK XI. 

"A POINTER." 
'•This, also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts " 

rOETY years or more ago, McGuffey's 
Second Header had a story in it, 
apropos. It was called "The Farmer and 
the Larks," and was substantially this: A 
meadow lark had nested in a field of wheat 
and raised a family. Before their wings 
had grown, the brood were thrown into a 
panic one day in the absence of the 
mother bird, by hearing the owner of the 
field examining the grain and speaking 
to his son about the harvesting. "This 
grain is ripe," he said, "and must be cut! 
Go therefore to our relatives across the 
valley and tell them it is so, and ask them 
to come to us and cut the grain." 
* 

When the old lark came home from her 
foraging in the evening and had 
heard the story, she quieted the young 
ones and tucked them — full stomached 
but still hungry into bed — saying in a 

38 



chirp — "We are in no danger yet." 

* 

And it was so. 
The kinsfolk did not arrive, 
though duly notified, and the far- 
mer was surprised and vexed, and came 
again inspecting, saying to his son, as 
they walked near the nest: "We must not 
wait on our relatives. Go quickly to our 
neighbors and ask them not to fail us on 
the morrow or we may lose the earnings 
of a year." 

This, too, the tidy matron heard that 
night as the children, with their 
brown bibs, chattered over their worms, and 
said as cheerily as if she knew the farm- 
ers operations were but another "lark." 
"Oh, never mind," and in the morning 
smoothed out her yellow fichu and went 
out for the day. 

But the neighbors failed, also, and the 
farmer raged at the unreliability of 
human kind and said loudly enough to be 
heard through their pin feathers if the 
larklings had been without ears: "We 
will reap it ourselves! Come on, boy, turn 

39 



the grindstone. We will sharpen our sick- 
les and cut our own grain, and neighbors 
and relatives may do the like! Independ- 
ence now and Independence forever!" — or 
words to that effect. 
# 

And precisely that came to pass. The 
next evening the wheat was in shock 
— but the birds were safe in the copse be- 
yond, for even a lark knows that when a 
man resolves to do his own work, it will 
be done. 

* 

Men, women and birds! Hear the gos- 
pel and heed it! If you want any- 
thing done, do it. If you would maintain 
your business credit and g-et on, keep your 
eye on it and your hand as far as you 
can! 

If you want your house kept in order, 
see to it! No servant will do it as well — 
not many will do it at all, otherwise. 
Riches and "help" and "a long head for 
planning" (and that last, I think must be 
universally present in the feminine gen- 
der, for I have haard so many women 
confess it) never yet — or rarely — "kept 
house" mistressless. 

40 



The front stoop and the hall rug, and 
the parlor may prosper in hired 
hands, but it would touch the heart and 
other sensitive viscera of the most obdur- 
ate man, to see the condition of or- 
phaned back-stairs and pantries and 
pots and pans. 

* 

The velvety lawn at the front has an 
awful back yard to match it, when 
the housewife sees to the one and the 
housemaid sees to the other. 

If God has sent you a boy to raise, raise 
him yourself — or lose him! The 
preacher cannot do it for jou, nor the 
governness, nor the kindergarten. If 
you have wealth and a carriage and ride 
in the park and carry a pug dog in your 
lap, while your nUrse girl wheels your 
baby wearily up and down on the sidewalk 
in its perambulator, you need not wonder 
if the dog turns out better than the boy. 
* 

That is no idle jest. One of the most 
startling facts of rescue work is the 
large percentage of drunkards and fail- 
ures that come out of Christian homes 



and churches and Sunday schools. It is 
shocking-, appalling; and one of the rea- 
sons is, that comparatively very few 
boys are shown how to live, by their own 
parents. There is almost no danger of 
a boy whose chum is his father, and the 
boy who learns life's delicate, difficult, 
dangerous elementary lessons from the 
lips of has mother, in the privacy and 
sacredness of his own home, will not be 
likely to bring up in the game bag of the 
saloon in later years. 
» 

In civic life, the rule holds good, no less: 
The vital work of citizenship cannot 
be done at second hand. To wait on 
others to prepare your ticket or settle 
your policy or declare your protest is to 
surrender your manhood and subvert 
your own kingdom. 

Proxy is the slyest devil of the legion, 
and vice president of the church in the 
world. 



42 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE PROXY CHURCH. 

THE church is trying- to save the world 
there is no doubt of it. But how? 
In genera], this way: 

Groups of good people form, perhaps a 
hundred strong on an average, and hire a 
pastor and induct him into the pulpit. 
* 

ON the first day he preaches, we are all 
there, and we look him over and his 
wife and children and pay our annual 
sum, and go home and stretch our com- 
fortable limbs in easy chairs and say in 
pantomime: "Well, now, thank the Lord, 
we have a preacher settled in our church, 
and I have paid my stint for the year, and 
am at liberty to wash my hands of all ac- 
tive responsibility for twelve months! Let 
the minister save the country." 
* 

And if the minister be a man of earn- 
estness and power who does seem to 
start a ripple of salvation in the nelgn- 

43 



borhood, we are net slow to recognize it 
nor to say complacently: "We are stirring 
things, we are doing a great work in our 
church" and we actually warm up to some 
personal effort by and by. Good effort, 
too, more or less, but "built upon the 
sand" of visible and comfortable prosper- 
ity, high percentages and rapid gains. 
* 

But the bulk of the Christ work of the 
world is void of "boom" or even vis- 
ible increase and as a rule the preacher 
fails — sometimes because he is not fit to 
win, but usually for the historic reason 
that "the harvest is great and the laborers 
are few." 



44 



CHAPTEK XIII. 

"Study to show tl^self appi-oved unto God." 

THEKE can be absolutely nothing 
said adverse to the sundry "foreign 
missionary" undertakings, yet the fact 
stands up hard and bare and dry ag'ainst 
the horizon, that no church in America 
is dealing worthily with its own vicinage. 
What with an overworked ministry and an 
over-fed and under-exercised laity, it is 
counted a prosperous society that "holds 
its own" from year to year, and one must 
travel far to find a church that is hated 
and feared by the vicious of its own neigh- 
borhood in business or in politics. 
* 

The reason of it, includes cowardice, 
venality, hj^pocrisy and many things 
unpleasant to speak of, but the evident, 
inclusive, compulsory diagnosis is in a 
word: "proxy." 



T 



he pastor is expected to preach two 
good fresh sermons each week and 

45 



deliver them without notes, conduct the 
mid-week meeting and keep it bright by 
pungent "talks" — more difficult to pre- 
pare than sermons, attend the young peo- 
ple's meeting and lead in prayer and fill 
any awkward pauses that occur, super- 
intend the Sabbath School and teach the 
young men's Bible class, make the High 
School commencement oration every year 
in his own town or some other, speak a 
eulogy at the cemetery on Decoration 
Day, visit the sick, bury the dead, marry 
the marriageable, baptize the baptizable, 
search out the poor, see that the young 
women do not have progressive euchre 
parties, and that the young men do not 
drink or dance or go to races, collect 
money for the religious newspapers and 
forward it duly, attend the caucus of his 
party and see that the right men are nom- 
inated and after election to see that they 
enforce the law, be prepared to give a 
reason for the faith that is in him and to 
explain the absence of whatever faith is 
not in him, visit each of his parishioners 
once a year independent of any special 
reason, be ready at all times to advise 
upon all matters of life and immortality 

46 



aud hold six weeks of special service an- 
nually beginning with the Week of Prayer, 
not to mention incidental duties not to be 
foreseen nor escaped. 

If, in the despair of his endless and im- 
possible task, he be constrained to 
straighten his personal conduct in poli- 
tics and business, to the edge of the Word 
of God, he is called impractical. The in- 
fluential member withdraws his support 
and the world the flesh and the politician 
take alarm. (?) 

* 

Which, of course, is not to be endured, 
and we say presently: "Well, this 
is a pretty kettle of fish — just when we 
were getting under way, too. What can 

have led Brother to make such a 

fool of himself? To be sure, he has hardly 
seemed the stuff for this town, from the 
first, but he had a great opportunity and 
has missed it. His usefulness is at an 
end here. 

Then, his wife has been no help to 
him. Our last pastor's wife acted as 
her husband's assistant pastor without 

47 



salary, and did as much parish work as 
he did, but this woman seems to find it all 
she can do to keep her own house and her 
own children in order and help her hus- 
band in domestic feminine ways. It's a 
shame. He never ought to have married. 
He ought to resign." 
* 

And sooner or later he does resign, and 
takes his wife and children and his 
books and his sore heart to another field 
— preaching — or soliciting life insurance — 
or selling books — or getting up a club for 
a newspaper. 

* 

Wanted — A recipe for saving the 
world by proxy! That is the adver- 
tisement of the church today. And the 
thought carries failure in it all the way. 
We are self-sold slaves of professionalism 
and partyism and committeeism. We are 
trying to preacherize the world, instead 
of Christianize it. 

* 

That fails — ought to fail — will always 
fail. To say nothing of the quality of min- 
isters, there are not enough of them to do 
what they are set to do, and if they were 

48 



of the requisite fineness, and if there 
were enough of them, yet it is not manly, 
honest, or Christian for you and me to 
hire a man to honor God and help the 
world in ways that we can personally use 
to greater good. 

* 

We ought to learn, must learn, this self- 
evident proposition, that the world 
is to be cleansed and saved, not by preach- 
ers or professional people of great or 
small degree, or "wide movements" sud- 
denly or leagues, or clubs, or parties, but 
by the small fidelities of individual Chris- 
tian living day by day, by you and you and 
you going out into the highways and 
harvest fields and work shops and jury 
boxes and caucuses and polling places, and 
innoculating the multitude with the virus 
of righteousness. 

"The times and the seasons" are in His 
hands whose we are and whom we say we 
serve. 



4':? 



CHAPTER XIV. 

"What is that to thee; follow thou Me." 

THIS proxy service makes critics of us 
all — rather than Christians, and de- 
lays the kingdom. 

The Spirit and habit of criticism is ram- 
pant in the church. Everybody seems to 
know precisely what the trouble is and 
precisely who is to blame, but it seems not 
to have occurred to many to look them- 
selves over carefully, in the white light of 
truth, in search of flaws. 

It would not be a bad idea to have an 
annual week of prayer for a great bap- 
tism of charity for one another — so that 
we might learn to do less of clawing at 
our friends who differ from us incidentally, 
and more straight out fighting against the 
common enemies of us all. 
* 

The greatest of reforms — "the temper- 
ance cause," as it is called— illus- 
trates the situation, painfully. It's com- 
50 



plete victory waits for nothing but the 
exorcism of the proxy devil and his valet, 
Criticism — or more accurately, Hypocriti- 
cism. 

You may have heard a woman before 
now holding forth to delighted au- 
diences to the effect that the real secret 
of the hold of the saloon upon America 
is to be found in the bad cookery — that 
our mothers and wives and servants cook 
badly, which causes indigestion in the 
children and provokes the desire of stim- 
ulation in the men and creates the ap- 
petite for alcoholic drinks and a demand 
for the saloon. 

* 

Which may, indeed, have something in it. 
But meanwhile mayhap her own hus- 
band gets his meals at a restaurant, and 
her own children run the street, and she 
forgets that criticism and cookery — no 
less than charity — begin at home. 
* 

Or a good woman inveighing against 
the freedom or the carelessness of 
physicians in the use of alcoholic rem- 
edies in their prescriptions, a thing that 

5i 



needs exploiting- thoroughly. But mean- 
time her own medicine chest being- a little 
"bar" of tinctures, and cordials, and es- 
sences, and patent medicines which she 
has overlooked, forgetting that the most 
"dangerous doctor in the world is the dos- 
ing mother. 

* 

Or an earnest pastor railing at the 
peril of sideboards — when his own 
altar rail is under the divine embargo: 
"touch not, taste not, handle not, the 
unclean thing." 

* 

Or a native American scolding at the 
drinking customs of the foreign im- 
migrants — complacently maintaining, 
meantime, a quarter of a million dram- 
shops set "to catch the poor." 

Or a citizen complaining of official cor- 
ruption high and low, all oblivious to 
the fact that by every principle of the 
law of agency, the corruption is as much 
his own as his right hand. 
* 
e need a new topographical survey of 
Christian duty, fixing the base line 



W 



52 



not at our neighbor's righteousness, but 
at our own, and from that, working out 
our own salvation, neighborward. 
* 

Christendom is full of "prohibition- 
ists" who chain off their civic piety 
from their neighbor's sin — who say * * 
"Just as good a prohibitionist as you are 
— but," or: "Whenever my vote will kill 
the liquor traffic, it is ready." 

The fault with that is not that the meas- 
ure is false, but that the "starting point" 
is afloat. One might as well attempt to 
calculate latitude and longitude from a 
wild goose. 

* 

And, strangely enough, these incalcu- 
lably wrong brethren accuse us radi- 
cals of being impractical. 
* 

What, then, is "practical" Christian- 
ity in that behalf? Only this: Be- 
gin at your own lips, and "work out" to 
sideboard, pantry, medicine chest, altar, 
school district, precinct, ward, city tick- 
et, county ticket, work it out! The order 
outward is not chronological but logical. 

53 



You do not stop at your town until you 
get it clean, and then advance upon the 
county and stop at that until it has been 
redeemed, and then move on to the state, 
and so forth. 

* 

But all these outworkings go on simul- 
taneously up to the measure of op- 
portunity. Your business is not to kill 
the saloon, but to "work out" salvation 
with all your might and all the time, until 
the last hard suggestion of the situation 
is, in the fine words of Matthew Arnold; 

Creep into thy narrow bed, 

Creep, and let no more be said ! 

Vain thine onset! All stands fast. 

Thou, thyself, must break at last. 

Let the long contention cease! 

Geese are swans, and swans are geese! 

Let them have it how they will, 

Thou art tired: best be still. 

They out-talked thee, kissed thee, loved thee: 

Better men fared thus before thee: 

Fired their ringing shot and passed, 

Hotly charged — and sank at last. 

Charge once more, then, and be dumb! 

Let the victors, when they come, 

When the forts of folly fall, 

Find thy body by the wall. 



54 



CHAPTER XV. 

QUID PRO QUO. 

"When tbou sawedst a thief, thou consentedst 
with him." 

THE drink seller's only argument is: 
"Men have drunk always and will al- 
ways drink, therefore, there must be sa- 
loons. Go to! Let us have revenue!" 



You see; the vice of the reasoning- is 
that it starts at a point that is not- 
fixed — another man — other men. There is 
even an intimation that for himself he 
would not sell drink. But his normal 
standard is useless, because he does not 
stand by it. 

Clearly, if you adopt the same point 
from which to reason, you bring up 
at the same place, and your criticism of 
the saloon keepers is plain hypocrisy. 



A 



ud it is safe to say that, if you meas- 
ure men by single actions and, when 

55 



you measure, bear in mind their different 
ideals, the caan who buys whisky and 
drinks whisky, and sells whisky, is even a 
better man than is he who would by no 
means buy it, or use, or sell, but who is 
none too good to sell the other man a 

license. 

* 

Look at that carefully! The saloon 
keeper sells whisky. Judge him by 
that alone. The Christian voter signs his 
petition for a license, or rents him a 
room, or votes for a license policy, or for 
a license party, or refrains from voting 
for party reasons. Judge him by that 
alone. 

Each reasons from the voice of another 
man. One from the persistent vice of the 
drinkers, the other from the persistent 
vice of the sellers. So far, they are on a 
level. 

* 

But consider their ideals! The saloon 
keeper does not pretend to be a 
"good" man, he does not claim to be a 
disciple of Jesus, he does not claim to be 
ready to sacrifice himself for the good of 
men or the glory of God. He is frankly 

56 



and openly for the wrong because there is 
money in it. Judge him by that. 



On the other hand, the Christian voter 
is a man of prayer. He says he is a 
friend of God. He says he is "all the 
Lord's." He says he has offered himself 
a sacrifice for humanity — and been ac- 
cepted. He says he is converted, sancti- 
fied, perhaps. He 'says he hates sin. He 
says he has the witness of the spirit. He 
says he is washed in the blood of the 
Lamb. He says he is saved. Judge him 
by that, and by comparison he is unworthy 
to unloose the other's shoes. 



A starting point is what we want. 
Let us go carefully here. There was 
a time when no lawful saloon existed in 
this country. One day the idea of one 
was conceived by a bad man, and he be- 
gan to put it into execution. Other bad 
men saw and approved, or said nothing. 
The voting church forbade the infamous 
thing as an outrage upon Christian vir- 
tue. 

The bad man cooly said: "I know you 



have virtue, but, what will you take for 
it?" and we named the figure we would 
sell for and he took us up at our own offer 
and bought the virtue and paid for it, and 
we took the money and sold the virtue 
and he simply has the usufruct which 
he fairly purchased, and a man who is a 
party to the annual re-sale of the public vir- 
tu e to the saloon keeper, is as to that, no 
more a Christian than he is, and far less 
a manly man. 



58 



CHAPTEE XVI. 

PARTI-COLORED PIETY. 

"They have given a boy for a harlot, and sold a 
girl for wine." 

ONE of the familiar stupidities of the 
day is the excuse one often hears 
from cultured, Christian men, to-wit: that 
the rank and file of the people are all right 
Taut that they are betrayed by their 
leaders and deceived by their parties. 
The childishness of it almost dazes one. 
Think of it! This is a government of the 
people, by the people, for the people. In 
the smiles of the people the political lead- 
er lives and moves and has his continued 
being, politically. In the frown of the 
people, the political leader dies. 

The smile is the thing that needs treat- 
ment. What can you do? Frown! One 
and another will join you by and by. 
There is no other way to do it. Our lead- 
ers are of our own making, and scarcely 
anything meaner could go by the name of 
Christian citizenship than the spirit which 

59 



aids in the elevation of bad men to office 
and then whines. 



We have divided ourselves, for conven- 
ience and for power, into political 
parties. It might be better if we had not 
done so, but we have, and it is now too 
late probably, to change the system even 
if we were sure that the party plan is 
bad. 

The functions of our sovereignty are 
for the most part performed by repre- 
sentatives. Representatives of the people 
is the theory, and the fact also in a way, 
but representatives of the party is the 
working hypothesis and the paramount 
idea. 

Let us not undervalue the men who 
"do" our statesmanship. What they are, 
we have sanctioned. Their deterioration 
could not have gone on against our pro- 
test. They could not reasonably be bet- 
ter men with such constituencies. But 
call to mind any representative of yours — 
your member of Congress, or of the As- 
sembly, your alderman. He stands for 
something; or his position, his very life, is 
representative. 

60 






Well, what does he stand for? Ke-elec- 
tion, and, speaking broadly, he stands for 
nothing- else. He has "views" — more or 
less — of policies, and glimpses, possibly, of 
principles, but the thing he stands for is 
re-election. Burt he has no show for that, 
unless his party wins, and his party cannot 
win without it can "work" the church and 
the saloon together at the polls, which at 
first glance would seem to be impossible — 
except, perhaps, in times of war or 
plague or other common and deadly peril. 
Xo party can possibly serve those two 
constituencies equitably. There can be no 
apportionment of places or powers be- 
tween them, nor any compromise of in- 
terest with honor to either. But the 
"member" gets re-elected year after year, 
because the party wins year after year, 
and year after year the "Bride of Christ" 
stands at the civic altar and takes the 
right hand of Hell and repeats after the 
Boss; "With this 'ring,' I thee wed, and 
with all my voting power I thee endow." 

This is sickening - . 



What does the church get out of it? 
Absolutely nothing. The ceremony — re- 



6 1 



duced to its lowest terms — is simply an 
abdication on her part in favor of the 
saloon. How dare the party treat her so ? 
That is a long- story. But the political 
boss is no empiric, no mere theorist, no 
enthusiast, no gambler. He takes no 
chances. His knowledge is of the labora- 
tory. What he knows he knows, and he 
has learned that to hold the saloon vote he 
must be true to the saloon, while to hold 
the church vote he may be false to the 
church. He has learned beyond a perad- 
venture that if he trifles with the saloon 
vote he loses it next time while if he trifles 
with the church vote, he controls it just 
the same next time. 
* 

He is not to be condemned, then, for 
standing by the saloon and laughing at the 
vaporings of the church. He is not a 
missionary, but a scientist who studies 
facts and acts upon them. And it is a 
matter of the barest common sense for 
him to guard the element that may be 
lost easily and to slight that which is sure to 
be on hand at need. Just as in a chemical 
laboratory the alcohol is kept in lockers 
snd on shelves — but the coal, in the cellar 

62 



and the Christian vote is the coal that the 
boss shovels into the party furnace, but 
the alcohol is warmed gently in crystal 
retorts in an upper room, and this is 
so, not because the Boss is what he is, but 
because the saloon vote and the church 
vote are what they are. If coals had the 
power at will to be diamonds and did not 
so choose, it would be paltry and con- 
temptible for them to lie in the bin and 
complain of the chemist. 
* 

We are not victims of bossism. We are 
its sponsors and its friends. "Actions 
speak louder than words." 

Not is our case any better against the 
parties. The crime of the party is not 
assault, but adultery, and the voting 
church is above the age of consent. 

This chronicler did not foresee that he 
would run into a party this trip, which 
shows him short sighted. Nevertheless 
let the way wind, we follow! And indeed 
it is not only fit but inevitable that fish 
should have bones and that there should 
be wax in honey. 

* 

In contrite confusion betimes, we charge 

63 



our political ills to the great parties — a 
senseless thing. A party stands to win, 
that is absolutely all. It has no con- 
science, it is incapable of guilt. 

All but a handful of Christian men 
South are in the Democratic party. What 
for? To win. To win what? Anything 
that will keep Southern saloon keepers 
and thieves, and spoilsmen, and place 
hunters, and Christian men, and unselfish 
patriots, and honest business men cohesive 
enough for party purposes. 

What can the church get out of that? 
There is but one possible way to manipu- 
late that incredible amalgamation, and 
that is to pander to the worst element 
who are ready to gamble on disorder, and 
disappoint the home-loving, hard-working, 
property-holding classes who hate tur- 
moil and have everything to lose by revo- 
lution. 

# 

In the North the bulk of the voting 
Christians are in the Kepublican party. 
What is that party? An aggregation of 
ministers and dramsellers, home mission- 
aries and murdereris, honest farmers and 
dive keepers, square dealers and conn- 

64 



dence men, school teachers and burglars, 
associated for a common purpose. 

What common purpose can that agglom- 
eration have that would satisfy the 
Church of Jesus Christ or help her on her 
way to save the world? 

Absolutely nothing is possible to be 
wrought by that means above the lower 
limbs of expediency, and the lean, 
meager, accidental or inscrutable good 
that may be thrown down by the ferment- 
ing notch pot. But meanwhile, the pos- 
sible natural and incorrigible output of 
evil, means treason rampant and anarchy 
at the end. 

Nevertheless the fact remains that such 
a party is perfectly good enough for the 
kind of Christian men that it can hold in 
that solution. 



Absolutely the only hope of the church 
is in a new party wherein young men as 
they come to years and older men as they 
come to their senses, may cast their 
strength without the necessity of insult- 
ing their mothers and turning their backs 
upon the voice of conscience. If no such 
party has as yet been formed, Christian 



65 






men must make one and stand by it, win 
or lose. 

The ministers and leaders ought to 
lead, no doubt, and it would be to the in- 
terest of their fame in the long 1 run, if 
they would do so. But we laymen have 
no quarrel with them for not leading. 
They know no more than we the right of 
it. They know no more than we the 
wrong of it. They are few at the best. 
We are many at the worst. We can honor 
the church. We can honor our own 
word. We can kill the saloon and though 
they will not lead, when we go right, 
they will make haste to follow. 

If they would lead, they could not. We 
would not let them. We do not hire them 
to lead, and with the exception of a few 
overwhelming men, the minister who in- 
sists on leading, has no pulpit — not for 
long. 

Note this! that in the churches of this 
country now, are many prohibitionists 
loyal and honorable, who vote that way 
unswervingly and let their faith be known 
year in and out. But the men of their 
parishes do not follow them as a rule, and 
the boys follow their fathers. A minister 

66 



ought to be strong, and brave, and true, 
not because he is a leader, but because 
he is a follower of Jesus Christ, a witness 
and a man. When God has spoken, to 
wait on any man is criminal. 



67 






CHAPTEK XVII. 

DIMENSIONS. 
"Sow by all waters." 

HE went "forth." 
He had never been to an agricul- 
tural college, and did not know much; but 
he knew enough to feel sure that the land 
would never go to him — and many a man 
has gone through a theological seminary 
without learning that — and to his simple 
mind the next step in the reasoning, was 
with his foot. 

* 

What would you think of a farmer 
who should go out into his back lot 
in the spring with a bag of seed about his 
neck, and mount a stump and call: "I am 
a sower, I am about to put in my crop. 
Let all the land that wants to be seeded 
come and be sown!" He would be thought 
a more or less harmless lunatic or a mere 
mountebank, and that, fairly enough. 



68 



But that is the precise method we have 
adopted for seeding down this world 
to righteousness: "Next Sunday morning, 
at eleven o'clock, the Reverend Mr. So-and 
So will sow. Good music. Strangers 
welcome." That is the standing advertise- 
ment. Xot many come, those who do 
have been planted to death already, so 
that a grain would practically have no 
chance even if it lodged in a good place, 
and the whole bagful of seed is flung upon 
a square rod of opportunity which al- 
ready bristles with suffocated little 
"greens" — like the earth below the spout 
of elevator. 

But this was a man of dimen- 
sions. It is impossible to imagine 
him as a local option prohibitionist vot- 
ing year after year for righteousness in 
his own poor little town until it grows so 
selfish and hide-bound, tha.t a saloon- 
keeper would starve on that account alone 
if he should start there, (for it takes a cer- 
tain amount of breadth, even to drink 
whisky) all the time in state and nation- 
al elections voting the sin ticket without 
a scratch. 

69 



Our Christian citizenship needs nothing 
more than it needs magnitude of in- 
terest and responsibility. The national 
policy that would hedge us in to trade 
with each other is enfeebling alike to in- 
tellect and conscience, and in the long 
run tends to poverty. 

* 

The arguments against the Hawaiian 
treaty that were based on our tra- 
ditional narrowness were unworthy of 
these times and of this country. We ought 
to have the Sandwich Islands and Cuba, 
too, for that matter, if we can have them 
honorably — even though every native cost 
us clear money to raise him. The nation- 
al heart and brain would grow by it. 



What right have we to shut ourselves 
up between these oceans and say we 
owe the islands of the sea no obligations 
and to say that none of ourselves shall 
buy goods of foreign merchants or fly the 
Stars and Stripes on ships not built 
by us? What right have we to 
expect the blessing of God upon our 
nasty little local option that in- 

70 



eludes a commerce which, carries thir- 
ty thousand gallons of rum for every mis- 
sionary to the heathen lands beyond the 
sea? 



7* 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

DEFINITE SERVICE. 

"Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eye- 
lids look straight before thee." 

HE went forth to sow." 
That was logical — for that is what 
he was — "a sower." Naturally he would 
not go forth to sit on the fence and 
watch what the neighbors were doing, for 
he was not a loafer — nor to kill a man 
who was working too cheap on the next 
farm for he was not a walking delegate, 
nor to observe the wind, for he was not a 
meteorologist, nor to frighten the birds, 
for he was no scare-crow, nor to analyze 
the soil, for he was not a chemist, nor to 
soar, for he was not a soarer, nor to sell 
flour, for he was not a merchant. 



We are here very close to the secret of 
Christian success. It is a woeful 
weakness of the church that so many 
sowers go forth to do something else, to 
be reapers, or orators, or rich, or suc- 

72 



cessful — anything- but what they are. 
The keenest, grimest, finest bit of litera- 
ture in the Bible — simplicity, history, sa- 
tire, gentle humor, wit, too, for surely it 
is most surprising — is this line which grave- 
ly narrates that "a sower went forth to 
sow." 

He was not only logical, but definite. 
The plague of pastors and the de- 
light of politicians is the indefinite good 
people who fly about like grains of pop- 
corn, but never get anywhere except as 
some one carries the popper or empties 
it. 



73 



CHAPTEK XIX. 

QUIETNESS AND CONFIDENCE. 

"Study to be quiet — and to do your own busi- 
ness." 

HE "sowed." That is what he went 
forth for. 
Sowed broad-cast, free-hand, out of a 
bag. "Thou shalt take much seed with 
thee into the field." 



Sowed! No gouging steel drill appar- 
atus stabbing in the grain and cover- 
ing it up like a dead dog. He threw it up 
as God sows the maple seeds, to let the 
wind blow away the chaff and withered 
grains, and leave the heavy grains to fall 
back upon the earth as gently as the pat- 
ter of a summer rain to woo the soil, not 
force it, to trust the wind and sun, and 
rain, and the chemistry of the ground to 
do the rest. 



t 
m 



* 

is possible to be sturdy and uncompro- 
mising but gentle, and the irritable 



74 



worker loses more than his patience. 
* 

A woman, who at the time w T as hostess 
to a public speaker, was making a gar- 
den. She had had it plowed and mellowed 
and made into pretty beds, but did the 
planting with her own hands. She had a 
long plank crosswise of the garden bed, on 
which upon her knees she edged back and 
forth all afternoon, changing the oaken 
knee-way every trip from side to side. 
* 

rrom the "spare room" window the 
guest watched her until his own back 
ached and his knees felt as if they were 
covered with bruises, and he descended 
finally and joined her, thinking to "visit" 
with her while she worked. But even be- 
fore he saw her face, he understood that 
his purpose was as unsafe as it would be 
to set off squibs around a barrel of gun- 
powder. She was angry. The children 
and the hens had vexed her, and the work 
was tiresome. 

* 

She had, in one hand, a sharp stick, 
twelve inches long or so, and in the 
other, seeds, With every side-wise hitch 

75 



she stuck her wooden dagger into the 
earth as if she meant to reach its very 
heart. Once, twice, thrice, and then into 
each deep wound dropped a lonesome lit- 
tle seed. 

It was earnest planting, but slow, hard, 
almost cruel. Statistics of the yield are 
not at hand, but it does not help seed to 
gouge it in. 

* 

Every man who has ever been a slave 
of drink, can remember how good 
people, earnest, busy, determined to do 
him good, have come to him "with a sharp 
stick" and pierced him and shoved into 
the wound a text of Scripture, seeming to 
say: "Sprout that quick, or be damned." 
Nothing could be sincerleir than the aim. 
Nothing could be much worse than the 
means. 

* 

But that is "the sin which doth so 
easily beset" a sower. The Kef ormer 
wears his heart out against the rock of 
apathy, and selfishness, and ignorance, 
until his spirit gets to be a boring, threat- 
ening, porcupine thing, hopeless of any 
winning , and he goes at his audience with 

76 



every spine erect; true, and brave, and 
right in his purpose, but trussed, defeated, 
destroyed, by his own quills. 
* 

The present writer well remembers and 
somewhat profits by, he hopes, hav- 
ing been presented to a splendid audience 
as "a sharp threshing instrument having 
teeth." 

One may do good, even after such an in- 
troduction — and one owes no softness to 
a hypocrite — of whom the reformer has to 
deal with not a few. But human judg- 
ment is so faulty, and crowds so mixed, 
that it were well if he could teach himself 
to doubt the guilt of most, and go upon 
the presumption that men need light 
more than scourging. 
* 

But the reformer has no "corner" on 
this faulty manner. Mothers thrash 
their children because they do not forth- 
with assimilate an admonition. Evangel- 
ists almost detest an unresponsive audi- 
ence. "Let him that is without sin 
among von, cast the first stone." But 
this sower sowed. 

77 



CHAPTEE XX. 

EACH AFTER ITS KIND. 

"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap." 

Sowed what? 
Seed! not almanacs, nor "break- 
fast food," nor patent flour, nor dollars, 
nor diamonds. But seed, with something 
alive in it. God Almighty's endorsement 
on every sound kernel. 

Chaff flies higher and farther and is 
lighter to carry, but it does not grow. 
"Cooked stuff" catches the impatient 
crowd better, but it will not "keep," and 
it cannot multiply in needy hands. 
* 

It would be a great thing for the world 
if good men everywhere would stop 
running their theological waffle wagons, 
and sow seed. 

The "Word" of God is no better for a ser- 
mon than for an election, or a fair. Less 
statistics and more overt Bible will beat 
the weeds of the world. 

78 



Old as the world is, it is yet in its early- 
spring-, and we are sowers, every 
one, more or less diligent, more or less 
fortunate, more or less wise. Oh, friend, 
be careful what you sow! 
* 

The greatest seed a man can put into 
the earth is the ballot of a free citi- 
zen. The greatest planting- a man ever 
does is when he votes. A Republican 
ticket, as the case stands now, is a hand- 
ful of seed — good seed, too, much of it, 
but foul with the spores of saloons. 
* 

The Democratic ticket is neither bet- 
ter nor worse in that regard. 
To his own master, every one of us 
standeth or falleth, but from, that sowing 
what crops of drunkards, paupers, idiots, 
criminals are to spring up in our homes! 
God help us! 

* 

But would the crop be different if you 
had sown clean seed? Your crop, 
yes, indeed! "Thou shalt not sow with 
mingled seed." 



79 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS. 

"The righteous shall hold on his way and he that 
hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger." 

CRITICISM assailed him at every turn. 
One cried: "Look at the birds!" But 
he had no time to club the birds — and kept 
his gait. And as the golden showers fell 
along the way, perhaps he murmured in 
his heart: "Behold the fowls of the air, 
for they toil not, neither do they spin, and 
yet their heavenly Father feedeth them." 



Another shouted: "Think of the 
east wind," but he was no sail vessel 
but a man with divine power in himself, 
and he trudged on, with a sigh, maybe: 
"He that observeth the wind shall not 
sow." 

«• 

Another and another: "Wait till the 
dew is off; wait till the sun is low:" 
But he stayed not at all, and in his pa- 
tient mind the angel of labor may have 

80 



whispered: "Sow in the morn thy seed, and 
at eve withhold not thv hand." 



Another still: "Consider the thorns!" 
But he believed that the seed he 
sowed could hold its own with any tares, 
or thorns that ever grew, and plodded 
on. 



Another derided, saying: "What have 
you raised? The field is as brown as 
ever. Show a spear of green if you dare."' 
And he pulled his leathern belt a hole 
tighter and answered not a word, for he 
was not an experimenter. It was humble 
work he did. but sure. 



TY nd he was no child, that he should 
/-\ stop in his work to dig up grains al- 
ready planted and "show off" for a vindi- 
cation. What was he that he should 
be tempted to try to uncover the hand of 
God in the mound! 



Si 



H 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE CROP. 
God giveth the increase." 
E never re-appeared in the history, 



Icnaybe he died that night in the corner 
of the stump fence, or fell, worn out, in 
the last trip across the field as the night 
was closing down on the grey acre of 
rocks, and pools, and briars — as yet bar- 
ren as an ice floe — and as cold, and next 
day his critics may have said: "That move- 
ment was a failure, it is dead." He has 
no monument, nor any mark upon his 
grave. Nobody knew nor cared what had 
become of him — nobody but Jesus Christ. 



But the crop was a good one — thirty, 
sixty, a hundred fold. And the crit- 
ics gathered it. 



82 



I know my hand may never reap its sowing, 

But yet some other's may. 
And I may never see it growing, 

So short my little day. 
StilLmust I sow although I go forth weeping, a 

I cannot, dare not, stay. 
God grant a harvest, though I may be sleeping 

Under the shadows gray. 



I 



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